


consideration

by AnnaofAza



Series: with this ring (debt be paid) [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28095669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaofAza/pseuds/AnnaofAza
Summary: It's easy to lose himself in Keith, untouched by the past. There is no great risk, to tend to his own affairs, to mold his own story.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: with this ring (debt be paid) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1752307
Comments: 22
Kudos: 58





	consideration

By all accounts, Takashi Shirogane was a healthy baby boy.

At night, he would breathe strange and gasping in his crib, as if he was not accustomed to the air. He would lay still when other babies his age were rolling over to begin crawling. And most distressingly, when he did eventually run with others his age, he often became short of breath and was ordered by his nursemaids to retire to a bench.

His parents took him to doctors, where he was diagnosed and cured and speculated over and back in another week. But they didn’t know what was wrong with him, or had a word for it. All they could do is tell his parents that their son would never be strong.

And despite that, Shiro now thinks, he has outlived them all. Disease claimed his father. Despair claimed his mother. The war claimed his brothers. He had survived those trials and they had not.

And he had done what they could not do: turn their family wealth into a foundation, rather than a trickling fountain. His family had paraded in functions, shaking hands and slipping cards into mailboxes, letting wealth crack open the door and work—they said, work—do the rest.

What did they know about work? Their fortune had been passed on, like a parcel no one quite knew what to do with but to store in the attic. If anyone knew about work, Keith did, with his mechanic's hands and scabbed knees. He can easily imagine Keith in that factory, bending over a long table and fixing something with his clever, deft fingers.

That night, Shiro tells Keith to touch him. He's never quite asked this, so he supposes it's natural for Keith to stare at him and not move.

Still, he says, “Have you truly not done this before?”

Keith looks down at the bedsheets and up, through his eyelashes. “I've never been taught.”

That stirs something in him. “Then I'll teach you,” he says.

Shiro does. Keith learns to please him a little that night, and proves to be a quick study, following Shiro’s cues, to react to his sighs and slight trembles and bitten-down gasps, fingers soon trailing along Shiro’s body as skillfully as writing his letters. He uses his lips, his tongue, his nipples, even his cock to caress Shiro’s bare flesh, violet eyes narrowed in concentration, dark hair hanging over his eyes. He learns to bruise Shiro’s skin in the way he likes, in the places where it will be most discrete, but also when to yield to Shiro’s touch as he did on their first night.

He even learns to sink down onto Shiro’s right hand, to warm it with his breath and inside of his mouth, to please it as if Shiro is still able to feel every movement of his tongue. Keith trickles the specially-made oil over Shiro’s fingers as if anointing him, and Shiro rewards him by pressing in the right spots, the places all men love.

Afterwards, Shiro rubs his own lotion into Keith’s palms, thick and creamy and flecked with ground pearls. “They'll keep your hands soft."

Soft as many boys’ hands, at boarding school, at university—indeed, what did his parents know about work? He had studied by candlelight, by moonlight, neck and shoulders aching, sleeping in the dormitories with tears in his eyes.

Still, he’d learned to play rugby and rowing and others without betraying his exhaustion, to not go on the grounds at certain times, to eat with the proper forks and spoons, to call everyone by their surnames or nicknames if they were favored. It was a necessity with him, as his brothers roamed the halls, too: they were the Shiroganes, new wealth that could turn to ash by midnight.

They’d run out of nicknames, by then: he was simply _Shiro._ Even the teachers called him that, the visiting students, his eventual bedpartners—creeping into the dorms and under the thin blankets, nights cold enough for their chattering teeth to hide the sounds of a creaking bedframe. Only Adam had broken the chain, had called him _Takashi_.

 _Takashi, I hope this letter finds you well,_ Adam had written him once, in the droll fashion of the upper-class; they’d known by that time their letters were read by their parents and headmasters alike. They’d worked out a code when they saw each other during breaks, at ice skating parties and weekend dances and obligatory charity auctions, but preferred talking to each other in person, where words could be denied and not easily overheard.

Their early years had ended up training them well for war: _I am doing well. The weather here is runny and muddy, but your last bundle made it here safely._

How humble those gifts were—socks, postcards, bits from the countries they barely saw without shooting at something. He should take Keith on a worldwide trip someday—drink beers in a proper outdoor garden with one foot halfway out of a seat, stroll through museums without saluting stony-faced guards, lay in a proper bed without a fleck of dirt. He wonders if he can rewrite over these places, or strike them out as easily as a censor’s knife.

_Keith, Marmora misses you and so do I. I hope you are doing well. I have not heard from you in such a long time …_

It would be a valuable learning experience for Keith, Shiro tells himself while sitting at his desk, hand-carved and polished every Sunday. It won’t be like the trips of his own youth, with chaperones and minute-by-minute schedules and obligatory places to visit. Keith is his chosen companion, and they will do whatever they like.

_Please write to me when you can._

Shiro skims over the paper, flicks it into the fire, pops a chalky tablet in his mouth. His head once pounds like the beat of a war drum at the back of his skull; he hopes it goes away by tomorrow. It is too late to say he won’t come.

_All my best,_

_Kolivan_

Shiro tears another sheet of paper in half, glances out the window. Keith has taken his advice and gone outside, so he’s not pale as a captive prince in a tower. The servants trail him, out of sight, but Keith doesn’t seem to notice or care very much. He doesn’t have a shawl, as Shiro asked him, and Shiro sighs in brief annoyance—how careless of him, of his own health.

_They say he is sickly, Adam. They say he has been from birth, that he is weak._

At that age, Shiro remembers, he himself did not look ready for war. He looked as if he might catch a cold in the next bout of stormy weather, wither for days on his sickbed, and die. But he still wished to do so, if only to prove himself.

_No. Takashi is not weak at all._

Even in that place, he never begged for his life. (Nor in those antiseptic-smelling rooms or double-bolted closets. Those were training times.) It means more than those useless medals strung in strategic places around the house, the tiny ribbons affixed to his uniform will be brought out of storage and brushed for moths. Keith’s never seen him starved or fatigued or debased or with so much as a cough, and he intends to keep it that way.

 _I have some news for you, involving your husband,_ another note says. _Please write back to me._

Shiro rings a bell, and a servant comes within seconds, looking inquisitively at him.

“Bring my husband a shawl,” he orders, still watching Keith look towards the horizon, then at the house with a sigh. Perhaps there is merit in getting Keith some sort of plaything, if only to amuse him, to keep him from wandering off. He slides another paper towards him; he can write to a menagerie and make inquiries once he’s finished with all this tedious paperwork. “And prepare some tea for when he wishes to come inside.”

The servant ducks away with an affirmative murmur. Shiro turns back to his desk, resisting the urge to chew on the end of his pen, to reach for the bottle tucked away in a hidden drawer. Perhaps one day, he’ll entrust some of this to Keith.

Keith did want more to do, Shiro thinks. Perhaps some household numbers, letter addressing, checking for misspellings. He’s not quite ready for the careful signatures, for the heavy wax seals.

 _You are born into fortune, and you must seize it,_ Adam told him, huddled underneath the covers before the train took them to the battlefield.

_Ryou and Kuron—_

_You don't have the training, but you have the skills, the vision. Ryou wants the prosperity. Kuron wants the power. You can straddle both._ Adam stroked his arm, the arm that will be lost in Sendak’s fighting pits. _You’re the perfect balance, and it’s you who will make the Shirogane name known._

 _As long as you’re with me,_ Shiro replied.

Adam laughed. _Your parents disapprove too much. This match, they keep saying will come to nothing._

But they are wrong; Adam is forever. Adam's blood is bright red against his lips _. Promise me. Promise me you..._

"Shiro?"

Even in the dark, Keith does not resemble Adam, with his shaggy hair and long limbs, and Shiro finds himself silently criticizing him: He is weak in his opinions. He is ignorant and unpolished. He knows nothing about Shiro.

Yet, he’s a beginning. He’s a chance at happiness.

And lately, he _is_ happier. Shiro is glad of it; he meant it when he’d told Keith on the night of their engagement that he believed they could be happy together.

"I've awakened you," he says. "Go to sleep."

His husband looks very steadily at him. His eyes are blue, as deep as sapphires. Shiro does not know this yet, but there is something new in him, a hardness that he later recognizes from the battlefield. “Are you sure?”

It's easy to lose himself in Keith, untouched by the past. There is no great risk, to tend to his own affairs, to mold his own story.

And the carnal self in him that longs for excitement likes to put Keith through his paces. Shiro is not such a man that he can be celibate all his life, especially with a man like Keith. He is beautiful, all pale and sweet and no longer virginal but still shy enough.

And so Shiro lifts him, noting how good butter and bread have made Keith not so skinny, have made his hair gleam in the moonlight like a horse's tail, making sure to be gentle, gentle as always, but Shiro doesn't stop moving, doesn't stop taking, because he can read Keith as easily as Latin, as childhood stories, as the hidden tones in his parents' voices. 

And he knows he wants this, as he moves inside Keith, this light at the end of the tunnel that was promised to him, after a doctor's appointment, after school, after the war. He wants to forget everything up until now, the part of Keith's thighs and his curled toes and his steady pulse. He wants Keith's fingers gripping at the sheets of a bed he brought himself, not some childhood crib or marriage antique; he wants Keith's loyalty and love that's untarnished by what he can do for him and what he needs to hide; he wants them to only know each other and forget everything else. 

When it's done, Shiro sighs and draws Keith closer, smoothing a hand over his back. He would be a good husband, the sort of man that would have made Adam happy. He would not be beholden to his lineage. He would think and dream for himself.

And perhaps one day, he would be satisfied.


End file.
